Freudian psychoanalysis

"I am actually not at all a man of science,
not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a
conquistador--an adventurer, if you want it translated--with all the curiosity, daring, and
tenacity characteristic of a man of this sort" (Sigmund
Freud, letter to Wilhelm Fliess, Feb. 1, 1900).

"By the 1950s and '60s, the master's warning
had been drowned in a tumult of excited voices. Psychoanalysts and psychiatrists could
cure even schizophrenia, the most feared mental disease of all, they claimed, and they
could do it simply by talking with their patients"
(Dolnick, 12).

"The person best able to undergo
psychoanalysis is someone who, no matter how incapacitated at the time, is
basically, or potentially, a sturdy individual. This person may have
already achieved important satisfactions—with
friends, in marriage, in work, or through special interests and hobbies—but
is nonetheless significantly impaired by long-standing symptoms:
depression or anxiety, sexual incapacities, or physical symptoms without
any demonstrable underlying physical cause. One person may be plagued by
private rituals or compulsions or repetitive thoughts of which no one else
is aware. Another may live a constricted life of isolation and loneliness,
incapable of feeling close to anyone. A victim of childhood sexual abuse
might suffer from an inability to trust others. Some people come to
analysis because of repeated failures in work or in love, brought about
not by chance but by self-destructive patterns of behavior. Others need
analysis because the way they are—their
character—substantially limits their
choices and their pleasures." (American
Psychoanalytic Association)

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is considered the father of psychoanalysis,
which may be the granddaddy of all pseudoscientific
psychotherapies, second only to Scientology as the champion
purveyor of false and misleading claims about the mind, mental health, and mental illness. For example, in psychoanalysis schizophrenia and
depression are not brain disorders, but narcissistic disorders. Autism
and other brain disorders are not brain problems but mothering problems. These
illnesses do not require pharmacological or behavioral treatment. They require only "talk"
therapy. Similar positions are taken for anorexia nervosa and Tourette's syndrome
(Hines 1990: 136). What is the scientific evidence for the psychoanalytic view of these mental illnesses and
their proper treatment? There is none.

Modern psychoanalysis may be evidence-based, but Freud's work was
based on personal insights and inferences from work with patients, his and
those of other therapists. This entry makes no claims about the efficacy
of current treatments by psychoanalysts. It is about Freud and some of his
early followers.

Freud thought he understood the nature of schizophrenia. It is not a brain disorder,
but a disturbance in the unconscious caused by unresolved feelings of homosexuality.
However, he maintained that psychoanalysis would not work with schizophrenics because such
patients ignore their therapist's insights and are resistant to treatment (Dolnick
1998: 40).
Later psychoanalysts would claim, with equal certainty and equal lack of scientific
evidence, that schizophrenia is caused by smothering mothering. In 1948, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, for example, gave birth to the term "schizophrenogenic mother,"
the mother whose bad mothering causes her child to become schizophrenic (ibid. 94).
Other analysts before her had supported the notion with anecdotes and intuitions, and over
the next twenty years many more would follow her misguided lead.

Would you treat a broken leg or diabetes with "talk" therapy or by
interpreting the patient's dreams? Of course not. Imagine the reaction if a diabetic were
told that her illness was due to "masturbatory conflict" or "displaced
eroticism." One might as well tell the patient she is possessed by demons, as give
her a psychoanalytic explanation of her physical disease or disorder. Exorcism of demons
by the shaman or priest, exorcism of childhood experiences by the psychoanalyst: what's
the difference? So why would anyone still maintain that neurochemical or other physical
disorders are caused by repressed or sublimated traumatic sexual childhood experiences
or wishful fantasies? Probably for the same
reason that theologians don't give up
their elaborate systems of thought in the face of overwhelming evidence that their systems
of belief are little more than vast metaphysical cobwebs. They get a lot of institutional
reinforcement for their socially created roles and ideas, most of which are not capable of
being subjected to empirical testing. If their notions can't be tested, they can't be
disproved. What can't be disproved, and also has the backing of a powerful institution or
establishment, can go on for centuries as being respectable and valid, regardless of its
fundamental emptiness, falsity, or capacity for harm.

The most fundamental concept of psychoanalysis is the notion of the unconscious mind as
a reservoir for repressed memories of traumatic events which continuously influence
conscious thought and behavior. The scientific evidence for this notion of unconscious repression is lacking, though there is ample
evidence that conscious thought and behavior are influenced by nonconscious
memories and processes. And there is ample evidence that childhood
abuse, sexual or otherwise, can seriously affect a person's mental and
physical well being. There is also ample evidence that not everyone who is
sexually abused grows up to have psychological or mental problems.

Related to these questionable assumptions of psychoanalysis are two equally
questionable methods of investigating the alleged memories hidden in the unconscious: free
association and the interpretation of
dreams. Neither method is capable of precise scientific formulation or
unambiguous empirical testing.

Scientific research into how memory works does not support the psychoanalytic concept
of the unconscious mind as a reservoir of repressed sexual and traumatic memories of either childhood or
adulthood. There is, however, ample evidence that there is a type of memory of which we
are not consciously aware, yet which is remembered. Scientists refer to this type of
memory as implicit memory. There is ample evidence that to have memories requires
extensive development of the frontal lobes, which infants and young children lack. Also,
memories must be encoded to be lasting. If encoding is absent, amnesia will follow, as in
the case of many of our dreams. If encoding is weak, fragmented and implicit memories may
be all that remain of the original experience. Thus, the likelihood of infant memories of
abuse, or of anything else for that matter, is near zero. Implicit memories of abuse do
occur, but not under the conditions that are assumed to be the basis for repression.
Implicit memories of abuse occur when a person is rendered unconscious during the attack
and cannot encode the experience very deeply. For example, a rape victim could not
remember being raped. The attack took place on a brick pathway. The words 'brick' and
'path' kept popping into her mind, but she did not connect them to the rape. She became
very upset when taken back to the scene of the rape, though she didn't remember what had
happened there (Schacter: 232). It is unlikely that hypnosis,
free association, or any other therapeutic method will help the victim
accurately remember what
happened to her. She has no explicit memory because she was unable to deeply encode the
trauma due to the viciousness of the attack, which caused her to lose consciousness. The
best a psychoanalyst or other repressed-memory therapist can do
is to create a false memory in this victim, abusing her one
more time.

Essentially connected to the psychoanalytic view of repression is the assumption that
parental treatment of children, especially mothering, is the source of many, if not most,
adult problems ranging from personality disorders to emotional problems to mental
illnesses. There is little question that if children are treated cruelly throughout
childhood, their lives as adults will be profoundly influenced by such treatment. It is a
big conceptual leap from this fact to the notion that all sexual experiences in
childhood will cause problems in later life, or that all problems in later life, including
sexual problems, are due to childhood experiences. The scientific evidence for these notions is
lacking.

In many ways, psychoanalytic therapy is based on a search for what probably does not
exist (repressed childhood memories), an assumption that is probably false (that childhood
experiences cause the patient's problems) and a therapeutic theory that has nearly no
probability of being correct (that bringing repressed memories to consciousness is
essential to the cure). Of course, this is just the foundation of an elaborate set of
scientific-sounding concepts which pretend to explain the deep mysteries of
consciousness and behavior. But if the foundation is illusory, what possibly could be the
future of this illusion?

There are some good things, however,
that have resulted from the method of
psychoanalysis developed by Sigmund Freud a century ago in Vienna. Freud
should be considered one of our greatest benefactors if only because he pioneered the
desire to understand those whose behavior and thoughts cross the boundaries of
convention set by civilization and cultures. That it is no longer fashionable to condemn
and ridicule those with behavioral or thought disorders is due in no small part to the
tolerance promoted by psychoanalysis. Furthermore, whatever intolerance, ignorance,
hypocrisy, and prudishness remains regarding the understanding of our sexual natures and
behaviors cannot be blamed on Freud. Psychoanalysts do Freud no honor by blindly adhering
to the doctrines of their master in this or any other area. Finally, as psychiatrist
Anthony Storr put it: "Freud's technique of listening to distressed people over long
periods rather than giving them orders or advice has formed the foundation of most modern
forms of psychotherapy, with benefits to both patients and practitioners"
(Storr 1996: 120).